How to format your references using the Molecular Biotechnology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Molecular Biotechnology. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Cresswell, P. (2004). Cell biology. Cutting and pasting antigenic peptides. Science (New York, N.Y.), 304(5670), 525–527.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lum, L., & Beachy, P. A. (2004). The Hedgehog response network: sensors, switches, and routers. Science (New York, N.Y.), 304(5678), 1755–1759.

A journal article with 3 authors

Long, J. C. S., Loy, F., & Morgan, M. G. (2015). Policy: Start research on climate engineering. Nature, 518(7537), 29–31.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Neutze, R., Wouts, R., van der Spoel, D., Weckert, E., & Hajdu, J. (2000). Potential for biomolecular imaging with femtosecond X-ray pulses. Nature, 406(6797), 752–757.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Higgs, P. G., & Attwood, T. K. (2004). Bioinformatics and Molecular Evolution. Malden, MA USA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

An edited book

Pollard, A. B., & Duncan, C. B. (Eds.). (2016). The Black Church Studies Reader. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US.

A chapter in an edited book

Pelletier, É. (2013). Antifouling Agents and Associated Ecotoxicity. In J.-F. Férard & C. Blaise (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Aquatic Ecotoxicology (pp. 39–48). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Molecular Biotechnology.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014, July 25). Newly Discovered Gut Virus Is In At Least Half of All Humans. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/newly-discovered-gut-virus-least-half-all-humans/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. (1989). Motor Vehicle Safety: Passive Restraints Needed to Make Light Trucks Safer (No. RCED-90-56). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Angell, B. D. (2017). Transformational Innovation and Transformational Leadership in the U.S. Government Department of Defense Acquisitions Workforce (Doctoral dissertation). Capella University, Minneapolis, MN.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Sisario, B. (2017, January 31). Bob Dylan’s Next Act: An Album of Standards. New York Times, p. C2.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1, 2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Biotechnology
Abbreviation	Mol. Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)	1073-6085
ISSN (online)	1559-0305
Scope	Biochemistry Biotechnology Molecular Biology Bioengineering Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology